Amos Quito:Throughout history, humans do seem to have had an inexplicable tendency to want to believe and put their faith in a "higher power" of some sort. These days we seem to be trending away from the traditional "sky-god" worship and leaning more toward the (often equally irrational) worship of State, "science" and academia.

Leaving aside several implicit assumptions of the loaded term "worship", I think it's tied to differential attitudes on authority, on what "authority" is, and (at a really fundamental abstract level) how lookup tables can be faster than algorithms in some scenarios (the difficulty being in the non-algorithmic step of picking which lookup table to use).

Amos Quito:But this creature is rare and elusive - as "science" is highly succeptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain, and is constantly manipulated by those we entrust - the bought-and-sold "Scientific Priest Class" to hoodwink and manipulate the befuddled rabble to serve nefarious agendas.

Seeming less so than most other forms of human endeavor, however.

Amos Quito:The placebo outperformed BOTH the SSRI's and the new drugs.The google-fu fails at the moment, so this will have to suffice.

...which includes a link to the technical article -- (doi:10.1001/jama.2009.1943) -- which includes in the abstract (emphasis added) "The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo increases with severity of depression symptoms and may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms. For patients with very severe depression, the benefit of medications over placebo is substantial."

The problem of isn't so much in the science, as in the second-hand reports of the science (EG: the link you used) by popular press media -- which is far more "highly susceptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain, and constantly manipulated".

abb3w:Amos Quito: Throughout history, humans do seem to have had an inexplicable tendency to want to believe and put their faith in a "higher power" of some sort. These days we seem to be trending away from the traditional "sky-god" worship and leaning more toward the (often equally irrational) worship of State, "science" and academia.

Leaving aside several implicit assumptions of the loaded term "worship", I think it's tied to differential attitudes on authority, on what "authority" is, and (at a really fundamental abstract level) how lookup tables can be faster than algorithms in some scenarios (the difficulty being in the non-algorithmic step of picking which lookup table to use).

So basically you're agreeing with me - that humans tend to have an inherent inclination to "believe" (or, defer to a higher authority, if you prefer), and apparently this tendency seems to be holding true, though the "authority" seems to be shifting from religion to other authorities such as the State, academia or "science".

Right?

Amos Quito: But this creature [PURE SCIENCE] is rare and elusive - as "science" is highly succeptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain, and is constantly manipulated by those we entrust - the bought-and-sold "Scientific Priest Class" to hoodwink and manipulate the befuddled rabble to serve nefarious agendas.

abb3w:Seeming less so than most other forms of human endeavor, however.

Maybe so, maybe no. As I said, it depends on the particular field of "science". See the examples I give below.

Oh, and you're not ASS-U-MING that I am defending religion, are you? Because that would be silly.

abb3w:The problem of isn't so much in the science, as in the second-hand reports of the science (EG: the link you used) by popular press media -- which is far more "highly susceptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain, and constantly manipulated".

Where do you think most people get their information on "science"? Do you think John and Jane Doe read peer-reviewed articles and studies? Or do they rely on articles such as the one to which I linked (in a rush - unable to locate the one I had in mind)?

So apparently you are defending "science" as pure and "scientists" as incorruptible, right? It's only the media hacks who misread and manipulate the data that are to blame?

First, as applied to my original point - it doesn't matter. Where once people allowed themselves to be manipulated by the sky-god priests, they now defer to the authority of science and academia - but they remain vulnerable to these manipulations in any case, do they not?

"Of 33 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2001 and 2002, one-fifth of supporting clinical trials were not published in medical journals, according to a new study. And those results that were published were often more positive than what companies presented to the FDA in their applications. As a result, potentially unreliable data is being used to promote drugs on which billions of dollars and thousands of lives may ride."Some studies aren't published at all. Then, when they are, there are little changes that make the papers look more favorable towards the product," said review co-author Lisa Bero, a University of California, San Francisco health policy expert.

The data is coming out ten years after the malfeasance described here which resulted in the information being hidden from doctors that the expensive new drug, Seroquel, was less effective than older, cheaper drugs, and that there was solid evidence that it caused both weight gain and diabetes.

As many of you have learned the hard way, the diabetes that the atypical psychotic drugs like Seroquel causes may be irreversible. It is probably not caused by the weight gain experienced in people who take these drugs, as the story suggests. Instead, as is so often the case, the weight gain probably occurs after it breaks something that causes blood sugars to rise high enough to increase insulin resistance.

What's really tragic here is that people took Seroquel because the company hid the data suggesting it was less effective than halperidol, an older drugs whose problems were well understood.

But my reason for highlighting this study is not just because of what it shows us about how Seroquel was marketed, but because it alerts you, once again, to the techniques that have been used by all the drug companies selling expensive new drugs and makes you aware of how far they are willing to go to convince doctors to prescribe these new drugs to you even when they have internal documents warning that these drugs may not be effective and that they may do patients harm.

The New England Journal of Medicine has just published a study that found the effectiveness of 12 of the most popular antidepressants has been exaggerated because pharmaceutical companies have been 'hiding' data from negative drug trials.

Known as the 'file drawer effect', it involves submitting only positive results to be published in scientific journals.

[...]

They then compared the results from all the trials, to just the trials that had been published in the medical literature.

The findings are quite shocking:

A total of 37 studies viewed by the FDA as having positive results were published; 1 study viewed as positive was not published.

Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies).

According to the published literature, it appeared that 94% of the trials conducted were positive. By contrast, the FDA analysis showed that 51% were positive.

[...]

[SCIENCE, PEOPLE!]

As to the FDA, the agency has a literal revolving door with Big Rx, where "good" administrators move into high paying gigs with the Drug Giants - and the same goes with defense contractors, and virtually every other realm of industry that has "oversight".

So NOW you're going to scream that it isn't the SCIENCE that is faulty, but the people, the corporations and the government agencies, RIGHT? Well, that is EXACTLY what I have been saying from the outset, isn't it?

But that does NOT detract from my original point, that that humans tend to have an inherent inclination to "believe" (or, defer to a higher authority, if you prefer), and apparently this tendency seems to be holding true, though the "authority" seems to be shifting from religion to other authorities such as the State, academia or "science".

As I said above - "science" is highly succeptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain, and is constantly manipulated by those we entrust - the bought-and-sold "Scientific Priest Class" to hoodwink and manipulate the befuddled rabble to serve nefarious agendas."

Amos Quito:But this creature is rare and elusive - as "science" is highly succeptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain, and is constantly manipulated by those we entrust - the bought-and-sold "Scientific Priest Class" to hoodwink and manipulate the befuddled rabble to serve nefarious agendas.

First of all, science isn't a thing, it is a process. It is a methodology for understanding the Universe and its faculties.

Secondly, while that process is subjected to human faults and biases, it is also self-correcting via the mechanism known as: "peer review".

Whoever tries to hi-jack scientific processes for personal agendas will eventually have that science challenged and thrown out on the basis that it flies in the face of reality. Science implores constant testing and retesting of its assertions to ensure the highest probabilistic outcome. And unlike religion, science is not dogma -- it is not interested in what the conclusions are, only that the methods used to reach them fit the evidence. The only thing that can dispute science is science.

If you can think of a better process for understanding the natural world and its properties, I'd love to hear it.

Question: What field of human endeavor, pray tell, would you say is NOT "highly succeptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain." And if none exist, then what field would you say is less susceptible than science?

Amos Quito:Where do you think most people get their information on "science"? Do you think John and Jane Doe read peer-reviewed articles and studies? Or do they rely on articles such as the one to which I linked (in a rush - unable to locate the one I had in mind)?

Yes, the world is too complex and too sophisticated for everyone to really understand everything, and we must put our trust in the technocrats who study these fields (no, NOT belief. Trust. There is a difference). That doesn't mean the technocrats can lie and swindle their way to personal power and profit because their discoveries are still reliant on real world application, and if they lie, then those applications won't work. They'll be outed as frauds, and they quite frequently are.

Secondly, the fact that these scandals were uncovered and overturned is because the science didn't work. The false data did not correspond with reality. And this happens all the time.

Science is wrong more often than it is right. In fact, most of the time it is wrong. It is not a straight line path to truth. It is blind, often stumbling erratically, and tripping over itself constantly until it finds the correct answers (and usually they're not very accurate until refined generations later). Phlogiston, physiognomy, spontaneous generation, lamarckism, luminiferous aether, miasma, contact electrification, caloric theory, humorism and geocentrism were all considered valid scientific theories (ie: bodies of knowledge supported by known facts) until they were overturned, respectively, by oxidation and combustion, neuroscience, biogenesis, evolution, special relativity and quantum mechanics, germ theory, electrochemistry, thermodynamics, biology and heliocentrism as new evidence was uncovered and new facts came to light.

Everything science explains is a "best guess" scenario. It doesn't provide truth, it only studies facts. When someone tries to distort scientific findings for personal gain, the self-correcting mechanism of scientific methodology will out them eventually. You can not lie to reality and get away with it.

Ishkur: I see you here, furiously defending science and comparing it to theology AS IF I had attacked the the former and promoted the latter.

But as I didn't even *hint* at such a suggestion.I must assume that your reaction is entirely reflexive. You're tilting at windmills, sir. If you would review my first offering in this thread, and then my clarification of that statement (intended to calm the accusations of heresy) you would see that, but I fear you are too preoccupied with the windmills.

The point that I had hoped to express was the inherent tendency for humans to defer to authority, and that historically, said authority was largely religious based. I hoped to further to point out that, while deference to religion is waning, the human tendency toward kowtowing to authoritarian influence has not, rather, the objects and offices of veneration have merely shifted.

While have the highest regard for the scientific process, I hold the highest disdain for those who would usurp and pervert that process for the sake of ego, political, or financial gain - the latter being exemplified in the cites I provided above.

The drug Vioxx was put on the market thanks to the maker and their scientists providing intentionally misleading data - and as you said, the process self-corrected - the drug WAS pulled in 2004, but not before it KILLED 27,000 people - not because science was "wrong", but because it was intentionally perverted for the sake of greed.

And similar pseudo-scientific bullshiat is used to manipulate the masses in the political arena, is it not? I point to the "global warming" debates as an example. Pick a side.

I thank you an the other knee-jerkers who redsponded to my posts with such spittle spewing spirit in defense of that which was not being attacked, as you effectively illustrated this social auto-immune disorder - Crusaders of the Modern Faith.

Amos Quito:I see you here, furiously defending science and comparing it to theology

Half your posts are lame "science is a religion" rhetoric. If you're complaining about being misunderstood, the problem is yours. You seem to distrust science. Until you come up with a better system, it's the best one we have for understanding what's going on.

Amos Quito:The point that I had hoped to express was the inherent tendency for humans to defer to authority,

Science is not an authority, it is a process of investigative inquiry.

It is wholly dependent upon the evidence around us, irrespective of what anyone says or thinks. The evidence stands and falls on its own merits, not because someone says it does, and that is something quintessentially unique about science.

Amos Quito:I hold the highest disdain for those who would usurp and pervert that process for the sake of ego, political, or financial gain - the latter being exemplified in the cites I provided above.

Yes, but that is a feature -- not a bug -- of science. It proves science's vitality for it to root out and expose fraud.

Just because people are too busy, stupid and lazy to do the research themselves and they rely on hierarchical authorities to soundbite the science for them, it matters not to science.

Amos Quito:The drug Vioxx was put on the market thanks to the maker and their scientists providing intentionally misleading data - and as you said, the process self-corrected - the drug WAS pulled in 2004, but not before it KILLED 27,000 people - not because science was "wrong", but because it was intentionally perverted for the sake of greed.

Ishkur:Amos Quito: I see you here, furiously defending science and comparing it to theology

Half your posts are lame "science is a religion" rhetoric. If you're complaining about being misunderstood, the problem is yours. You seem to distrust science. Until you come up with a better system, it's the best one we have for understanding what's going on.

No, I'm not "complaining about being misunderstood", you simply can't read - or you're a dick. (Scientific evidence would point to the latter)

Ishkur:Amos Quito: The point that I had hoped to express was the inherent tendency for humans to defer to authority,

Science is not an authority, it is a process of investigative inquiry.

"Science", whether real, contrived, or perverted, is frequently (and often fraudulently) used by "authority figures" (and others) as a justification for ramrodding nefarious agendas down the throats of the stupefied masses. Wouldn't you agree?

Or are you just a dick?

Ishkur:It is wholly dependent upon the evidence around us, irrespective of what anyone says or thinks. The evidence stands and falls on its own merits, not because someone says it does, and that is something quintessentially unique about science.

Irrelevant to the fact that "science" is used as a tool for manipulation? YES!

Okay, so you're just a dick.

Ishkur:Amos Quito: I hold the highest disdain for those who would usurp and pervert that process for the sake of ego, political, or financial gain - the latter being exemplified in the cites I provided above.

Yes, but that is a feature -- not a bug -- of science. It proves science's vitality for it to root out and expose fraud.

Just because people are too busy, stupid and lazy to do the research themselves and they rely on hierarchical authorities to soundbite the science for them, it matters not to science.

Again, my criticism was not of "science" per se, but of the way that science is manipulated to dupe the people and serve ulterior motives. You know this, yet you continue in your ego-driven attack.

Your dickishness is unimpeachable.

.

Ishkur:Amos Quito: The drug Vioxx was put on the market thanks to the maker and their scientists providing intentionally misleading data - and as you said, the process self-corrected - the drug WAS pulled in 2004, but not before it KILLED 27,000 people - not because science was "wrong", but because it was intentionally perverted for the sake of greed.

You are a prime example of the "ego driven pseudo-scientist" in that, in spite of having been carefully and meticulously corrected, you continue to belabor your "point".

Why? Because YOU INSIST ON BEING RIGHT! Evidence be damned.

Thanks for providing a fine example to illustrate my points, Ishkur.

/"Science"//LOL///Dick

I think the only point that Ishkur was trying to make is that the science is just fine. You are correct when you say that the appearance of science can be used as a fig leaf for shoddy or disingenuous research but pretty much every approach to looking at the universe has been abused that way, which renders your complaint meaningless. Ishkur's arguments seemed calm and well reasoned while yours consisted largely of ad hominem attacks. Based on that it would seem to me that Ishkur won this little debate.

Amos Quito:So basically you're agreeing with me - that humans tend to have an inherent inclination to "believe" (or, defer to a higher authority, if you prefer), and apparently this tendency seems to be holding true, though the "authority" seems to be shifting from religion to other authorities such as the State, academia or "science".

Certainly, it's possible for other institutions to be the focus of RWA; the case of the State in the USSR being an existence demonstration, although the degree that was functionally a religious institution can be raised.

However, the tendency isn't uniform. Furthermore, the tendency is only circa 50% genetic; it's at least a third environmental, and some aspects of academia and science as cultural institutions appear to act as net moderators to the initial authoritarian tendency. While it's statistically certain there are some high-RWAs with scientists/academia as their oracular focus, they appear to exist as outliers. As such, your assertion appears to be a less-than-half truth.

Elaborating further would seem to require getting agreement on some precise terminology to discuss the nature of authority, with some tedious precursor math.

Amos Quito:Maybe so, maybe no. As I said, it depends on the particular field of "science". See the examples I give below.

For several of those, you confuse "science" and "engineering". That aside, showing that there exist examples of corruption does not suffice to show that the tendency is more or less than other fields of human endeavor.

Amos Quito:Where do you think most people get their information on "science"?

"Popular understanding of science" is not the same thing as "science", however.

Amos Quito:So apparently you are defending "science" as pure and "scientists" as incorruptible, right?

Only relatively pure/incorruptable, not absolutely; that is, the anthropological practice of science is less corruptible than most other human cultural institutions.

Amos Quito:Where once people allowed themselves to be manipulated by the sky-god priests, they now defer to the authority of science and academia - but they remain vulnerable to these manipulations in any case, do they not?

The difference in nature of the institutions leaves the degree of vulnerability reduced.

Ishkur:First of all, science isn't a thing, it is a process. It is a methodology for understanding the Universe and its faculties.

More exactly, the term "science" is used variously (and oft ambiguously) to refer to such philosophical methodology, the anthropological practice implementing it, and the body of knowledge resulting.

Ishkur:What field of human endeavor, pray tell, would you say is NOT "highly succeptible to corruption for the sake of ego, profit and political gain."

The inherent problem with any human endeavor is you're still relying on humans.

Ishkur:Science is not an authority, it is a process of investigative inquiry.

The latter does not necessarily preclude the former. However, addressing the extent that "a process of investigative inquiry" can be said to be "an authority" would require getting into that precise terminology I mentioned before.

There may be a more parsimonious explanation for a broader evidence set.

JasonOfOrillia:You are correct when you say that the appearance of science can be used as a fig leaf for shoddy or disingenuous research but pretty much every approach to looking at the universe has been abused that way, which renders your complaint meaningless.

I would suggest the word "trivial" rather than "meaningless".

JasonOfOrillia:Ishkur's arguments seemed calm and well reasoned while yours consisted largely of ad hominem attacks. Based on that it would seem to me that Ishkur won this little debate.